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1493-01-05

Columbus describes Monte Cristi as lovely and high in a low plain

Haitian

… but it should be by day, sounding first with the boat. From the said mount east toward Cabo del Becerro the 4 leagues are all beach and very low and beautiful land, and the rest is all very high land, and great mountains, cultivated and beautiful, and inland a range runs from northeast to southeast, the most beautiful he had seen, which looks just like the range of Córdoba. Very far off there appear also other very high mountains toward the south and southeast, and very great valleys, and very green, and very beautiful, and very many rivers of water; all this so pleasant and in such quantity that he did not believe he was praising it a thousandth part. Then he saw east of the said mount a land that looked like another mount, just like that of Cristi in size and beauty. And from there, a quarter of the east toward the northeast, it is land not so high, and it would run a good 100 miles or near it.

Source  ·  p. p. 273 Bartolomé de Las Casas, Diario del primer viaje (Las Casas’s abstract of Columbus’s log), in Navarrete, Colección de los viages y descubrimientos, t. I (1825), p. p. 273